Little Shop of Horrors WITHOUT the Puppets?- Page 2

[SondheimFan5]

Posted: 1/30/11 at 11:20am

Will it vocally be an issue? that role's written for a bass.

(and btw I love your ideas!! This sounds really interesting!) Updated On: 1/30/11 at 11:20 AM

[IAMmyownMUSICAL]

Posted: 1/30/11 at 3:11pm

Personally I absolutely despise and detest the idea.
Don't do a show SPECIFICALLY and written TOTALLY about a PLANT and then not be able to have the resources necessary. If you can afford the skrim, and costumes, and wiring, and lights, and all the jazz needed to catapulte your idea...then you can easily rent the plant fromt a local company.

Your idea just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. I'm not necessarily a purist for this show, but if I showed up and saw that I would leave.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 1/30/11 at 3:18pm

“Well, asshole”

See, gvendo2005, when you post thing like that, or asinine comments like raising Linda Hopkins from the dead, no one will take your comments seriously. I've recently worked with Linda and she's alive and well, thank you very much.

Nice to see you’ve been here for so long and you still don’t know the rules of this board.

Updated On: 1/30/11 at 03:18 PM

[IAMmyownMUSICAL]

Posted: 1/30/11 at 4:23pm

HA!

Preach TheatreDiva

[jagfkb]

Posted: 1/30/11 at 5:20pm

IAM, exactly, the musical is written about a plant... not a 2 ton puppet. And quite frankly i'm suprised that you think "I know what's better than the writers". As a director, it's your role to mount a production which you feel tells the story the best. You take what the writers give and make it your own. Also, name one revival ANYWHERE in the world that was artistically successful when it tried to carbon copy the original. Theatre is created by taking chances, exploring new alternative. That's what I propose.

Also, about the concerns for the part vocally, the part has been performed by altos all over the country:

http://www.broadwaytheatre.com/photo_pgs/LittleShopOfHorrors.htm

Even Terri White did a production of Little Shop in Westchester.

[sfs1414]

Posted: 1/30/11 at 5:42pm

You do also realize that it is illegal to in the words you used: "restore" songs or dialogue. By adding "Mean Green Mother" you aren't restoring anything since it was never in the show and was written for the film. It is illegal to add or change anything unless given permission from the authors!
Personally I think that the only way a different approach or concept can work is if it makes 100% sense with the script and what the authors intended when they wrote it.
If it doesn't support the text then don't do it!!
I've seen many productions that have tried a cool concept and it only worked for certain parts of the show and of course that is a failure!

[Kad]

Posted: 1/30/11 at 10:41pm

To be fair, jagfkb did specifically say they were going to try to get permission to do that. I'm just not sure how well that number would work on stage, even though I do love it.

I just think that Little Shop is written with a very specific conceit in mind. Sure, designs of the plant vary (just look at the stunning London revival from a few years ago- imagined the plant in a different way), but it's still.. a plant. Putting all this extraneous stuff can really smother the piece, which is, at its heart, a very simple piece of theatre. I think it's great you want to pursue the B-movie stuff, since that's where the piece is rooted (no pun intended). But your alternative Audrey II just grinds against the B-movie conceit (which the plant puppet arguably originates from and fits into perfectly)... and could come across as looking even more cheap than a flaccid and inert puppet.

Little Shop is really a show that is best served by simplicity. It's not helped by any number of "concepts" thrust upon it, it's not helped by razzmatazz and spectacle, it's not helped by drenching it with irony. I'm not saying your idea is any of these things, but I'm just concerned that what you present is not true to the text.

[My Oh My]

Posted: 1/30/11 at 11:09pm

Kad's post is the only one I agree with so far.

All this talk about theatre being this and that about chances and risks and creativity sounds all very well and good, but in the end, the piece requires a talking plant. It's what gives the piece its charm. I guarantee you that replacing that with a woman (or a man, for that matter) dressed to look like a plant, who struts around, and so on and so forth, will ultimately alter one of the delicate basic ingredients that have made the live show so successful.

It can be portrayed by silhouette/shadow as you said but make sure it's that of a talking plant and not a man/woman who seem to have fallen into someone's garden. It can actually work. Nothing like the power of suggestion--it's part of the beauty of live theatre!!

[finishmyhat]

Posted: 1/30/11 at 11:46pm

Good luck getting the rights to Mean Green Mother. Most of these "productions" that have added it have done so illegally. Name one major professional production that's done it. Hard to do. The only thing from the movie that's surfaced legally is the revised ending to Grow For Me and the second verse to the title song. The show's pretty much remained frozen since the early 80s (sans the rewrite to Mushnik And Son which comes with the show now).

The reason that ...Mother probably hasn't been added is probably the reason there wasn't a song there in the first place. They couldn't get the biggest plant to move fast enough to sing. In a movie, that's not an issue especially when you're filming everything under speed like they did.

But since you feel like you're a better director than Ashman himself was, or Roger Corman for that matter, do your little people plant idea. It's absolutely stupid and defies the point of the show. It's a talking plant. Not a talking person.

[gvendo2005]

Posted: 1/30/11 at 11:54pm

Nice to see you’ve been here for so long and you still don’t know the rules of this board.

Thanks, Mr. Tact. Couldn't have just said, "I concede that finding a woman who is vocally right for the part is going to be a little hard, and by the way, Linda Hopkins isn't dead." Instead, you go out of your way to point out I'm as snarky as the rest of you. Well, I hate to break it to you, shitty-britches, but I'm hardly the worst offender. I care not whether I'm taken seriously, because nobody else seems to give a damn whether or not they are, and if they do, then they should find more self-fulfilling hobbies, or places not on the Internet where people will actually make the effort to take them seriously.

As for the talented Ms. Hopkins, excuse me if I make the logical assumption that a woman I haven't heard about since 1971 who was born in the early-to-mid-Twenties might not be with us now. So I didn't Google -- I'm lazy. Back off.

Updated On: 1/30/11 at 11:54 PM

[bwaylvsong]

Posted: 1/30/11 at 11:59pm

I wasn't buying a female plant until I saw this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XLoLVNXkZk

[singingbackup]

Posted: 1/31/11 at 2:31pm

ewww

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 1/31/11 at 4:55pm

That video is ridiculous.

[peachesr]

Posted: 1/31/11 at 5:14pm

What was that video? How laughable. How not to do Little Shop
Updated On: 1/31/11 at 05:14 PM

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 1/31/11 at 5:37pm

That was Boston Conservatory?!

Terrible.

[bwayfan7000]

Posted: 1/31/11 at 5:38pm

I think the OP's concept is interesting, though possibly a little too much. If done very well and stylistically, I sort of like the idea of a human plant that interacts with people, since it really is a character. But if it's done without a whole lot of careful planning, it will just look very very sloppy.

Also, with the original description, I can't help thinking of Arachne in Spider-Man flying around the theatre...

[Drunk Chita Rivera]

Posted: 2/5/11 at 7:49am

It was just announced that this is our show his year at school. The problem in our cast last year we had around 50 people and we plan on having even more this year. How can we make parts for the ensemble? The director plans on rotating the 3 girls and having like 10 girls do it so that will give us more parts but what about everyone else. Has anyone ever seen a production with a big cast?

Also I know the role of Audrey II is normally played by a male but would the humor be ruined if it was a girl (With a really deep voice)?

[orangeskittles]

Posted: 2/5/11 at 8:50am

I have to say it sounds to me like you're molesting a good piece of work in the name of your own perhaps over-confident "creativity." The piece is written to work in certain ways - I doubt that you will improve upon that.

Yeah, and Romeo and Juliet set in New York street gangs? Clearly a molestation of Shakespeare's genius. It would be as ridiculous as making Taming of the Shrew into a musical.

Theater isn't meant to be a museum piece. Whether you personally like the idea or not, it doesn't make it wrong to try something different (within the licensing rules). Yes, plenty of ideas will crash and burn, but that doesn't mean no one should ever be allowed to try something new. How much theatre wouldn't exist if the "over-confident" creative teams hadn't tried to improve upon a previous work?

[Kad]

Posted: 2/5/11 at 11:03am

The difference between this and those examples is that Kiss Me, Kate and West Side Story are adaptations of previous work- obviously a totally different thing than a director thrusting a concept onto an existing script. A more apt comparison would be "a production of Sweeney Todd with virtually no set, told from the view of a mentally deranged Tobias, ambiguous staging, and all the actors playing their own instruments".

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 2/5/11 at 3:11pm

"you go out of your way to point out I'm as snarky as the rest of you. Well, I hate to break it to you, ****ty-britches, but I'm hardly the worst offender."

How did I miss that meltdown?

[tourboi]

Posted: 2/5/11 at 7:52pm

To be honest, Boston Conservatory isn't carrying the amazing rep it once had.

As to not being able to rent the plant, when I did the show I believe it only cost us about 50.00 to acquire the materials to build our own plant, which looked pretty darn snazzy. You don't need a lot of money to do this show... that's the point.

It needs to be a fake, puppet of a plant. Because you're spoofing/celebrating a b-movie, a genre that was FULL of fake, puppet monsters.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 2/5/11 at 7:56pm

I built a full sized one out of scrap foam rubber and put it in a plastic tub to do the show in a night club.

Cost us nothing, and it looked better than some of the crap I've seen on Youtube.

[tourboi]

Posted: 2/5/11 at 8:13pm

Indeed. Further, what others have said rings true, if you plan on using MEAN GREEN MOTHER without the rights to it... here's hoping they don't shut you down or fine you.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 2/5/11 at 8:15pm

He said in the first post he was going to ask to use it.

[wonderwaiter]

Posted: 2/5/11 at 10:10pm

Many many years ago I saw a truly hideous community theater production of Little Shop that had tried to build their own puppets based off of available plans. The end result was so bad I started wondering if there wasn't a way to avoid the puppet conundrum altogether and just use an actor in a costume that suggested "plant". This was well over a decade ago, but I remember that I had the physical production all worked out in my head. I have to say, my workarounds were nowhere near as grand as the ideas you have presented. I don't see how your execution would be any cheaper than renting or building the puppets.